Heroic Guild / Shared Lockout RANT

Why lockouts?
Yeah because without them some people feel that their guilds will require them to run everything they can to get geared up to do harder content.
No one is making these people run anything, if you don't want to run it don't run it. But if you have a lockout you are stopping people who do want to run more.
So people are being stopped from playing because other people feel like they will be forced to run more, THEY ARE NOT BEING FORCED.
Let us play, and if your GM is honestly forcing you to run content and you don't want to... that is your problem, why make it a problem for the rest of us, stand up and say no or find another guild.

As in...? The three separate lockouts you have for the same tier in 5.4? Not being able to farm normal and heroic in one week? Who would want that? If you're running heroic you'll hardly need normal loot, and you'll hardly have the time for it. Fail to see the issue here.

No thank you. Shared lockouts allows you to saves time and keeps hardcore guild from getting more loot which is good for the competition. If you're in a heroic guild, you shouldn't care about NM, it's not like it's fun, especially after X weeks and you can invest that time in HC encounters.

Why lockouts?
...
So people are being stopped from playing because other people feel like they will be forced to run more, THEY ARE NOT BEING FORCED.

You weren't around during WotLK raiding were you?
Back then 10 man, 25 man (and their respective heroic counterparts during Toc) had separate lockouts. Result? Progression guilds forcing members to run the same instance several times (up to 4 times on 1 char, most had many alts as well) in order to stay on top of progression as compared to other guilds.
When it comes to true progression guilds, they will do ANYTHING to get ahead, and thus all the competing guilds need to do the same to stay on par.
This isn't a decision they enjoy, but they feel it is necessary. The guild members of course are then really being forced into it.

The current raiding system is something that has been refined over years of trial and error and I don't think they've had something as fair as they have now (not counting the whole thunderforged drop BS, just purely lockouts and what versions of the raids are available). I wonder how flex will interact with this, but if done properly it will only improve the experience.

Having separate locks for 10s and 25s was awful and back then they didn't even have the same ilvl gear. You had to run it anyway because there were a couple of BiS items in here. With the same loot tables in both it would be MURDER.

You weren't around during WotLK raiding were you?
Back then 10 man, 25 man (and their respective heroic counterparts during Toc) had separate lockouts. Result? Progression guilds forcing members to run the same instance several times (up to 4 times on 1 char, most had many alts as well) in order to stay on top of progression as compared to other guilds.
When it comes to true progression guilds, they will do ANYTHING to get ahead, and thus all the competing guilds need to do the same to stay on par.
This isn't a decision they enjoy, but they feel it is necessary. The guild members of course are then really being forced into it.

The current raiding system is something that has been refined over years of trial and error and I don't think they've had something as fair as they have now (not counting the whole thunderforged drop BS, just purely lockouts and what versions of the raids are available). I wonder how flex will interact with this, but if done properly it will only improve the experience.

Yeah I remember it still being top tier, raid leader would be like kay we got to heroic 10 man for some of the best stuff and yeah I'd be regularly chosen -.- some 10 man shit was BiS pretty much in terms of woltk model thus any decent raider would of been doing it.

Having separate locks for 10s and 25s was awful and back then they didn't even have the same ilvl gear. You had to run it anyway because there were a couple of BiS items in here. With the same loot tables in both it would be MURDER.

Yeah....not not really, Pputting 10 on par with 25 with loot&difficulty&prestige was THE mistake they made. With the lootsystem in place now, seperate lockouts would be indeed ridiculous. But the WotLK was fine, you could chill out a bit in 10man if you wanted while having nothing to do until main 25raid because loot was lower ilvl, you could easily go alts etc, was a great great time and not at all as awful as you make it seem to be. Putting 10 on par made that system awful, not the lockouts per se.
Who doesn't have fond memories playing their alt in WotLK in 10mans, chilling a bit, learning your alt properly in a raid setting, instead of getting mowed to bits and having a really frustrating time if you try to do altruns in ToT atm. Flex Raiding is hopefully brining back some alt-friendlyness again,

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Originally Posted by MestHoop

You weren't around during WotLK raiding were you?
Back then 10 man, 25 man (and their respective heroic counterparts during Toc) had separate lockouts. Result? Progression guilds forcing members to run the same instance several times (up to 4 times on 1 char, most had many alts as well) in order to stay on top of progression as compared to other guilds.
When it comes to true progression guilds, they will do ANYTHING to get ahead, and thus all the competing guilds need to do the same to stay on par.
This isn't a decision they enjoy, but they feel it is necessary. The guild members of course are then really being forced into it.

Wow yeah, ruin the whole system because the top5 feels it's mandatory to do 10manhcs on the side (which it is, for the wfirst race ofc), while the other top 5-9999999 guilds were having an amazing time with their alts in ICC and the like. Even with doing 10mans on the side, the work is still less than farming 5 hours a day for pots in vanilla, what's wrong with having to work for top5 kills.

But the WotLK was fine, you could chill out a bit in 10man if you wanted while having nothing to do until main 25raid because loot was lower ilvl

As a serious raider, no, you couldn't. Each tier had BiS loot from 10man despite the ilvl gap, with the possible exception of ToC. You HAD to do 10man as most, if not all classes. My favourite example of this is probably going to be Mjolnir Runestone which was BiS even after the tier was over.

OP is your character the human paladin named Madyaks? It's the only level 90 I could find, also you posted a few times in the paladin forum.
If so, what is you meaning in posting this thread?
You have only killed jinrokh on heroic twice. Are you asking that you should be able to run normal as many times as you want?

"People that are not me can't do things I would do if I was them!"
That's basically where most of the rants about raiding are coming.

'Monogamy'? Is that one of the ways people in Boringland bore each other?-Curvy

Wow yeah, ruin the whole system because the top5 feels it's mandatory to do 10manhcs on the side (which it is, for the wfirst race ofc), while the other top 5-9999999 guilds were having an amazing time with their alts in ICC and the like. Even with doing 10mans on the side, the work is still less than farming 5 hours a day for pots in vanilla, what's wrong with having to work for top5 kills.

Like I said in my original post: it wasn't just the top5 guilds, it was ALL progression guilds! Anyone aiming to do anything more than casual raiding was forced to farm stuff they felt they had no place being. Yes that system was fun for people who wanted to have some casual fun, I completely agree, but it sucked for the other side of raiding. I feel the current set-up is pretty decent with LFR, hopefully flex will only add to that.

Besides, the whole 10 to 25 man part wasn't even part of the OP's rant.

One of the more frustrating parts of balancing content progression is finding the balance between letting people enjoy the content as much as they want to, and making people feel like in order to stay in the "race" (which is the core component of enjoyment of the game - and I should stress: you don't have to be competing for world first to be a competitive raiding guild), they have to play more than they enjoy.

They seem to have found that staggered release and time-limiting mechanics (like bosses that can only be attempted for X hours/attempts/etc per week) tend to be taking it too far in one direction, whereas making it possible to run content many times over and over again to get better gear is taking it too far in the other direction.

Unlike LFR and alt raids and such, being able to run a 10 man (or normal mode, etc) raid on top of your usual 25 man heroic raid gave people too much direct benefit to skip it. As such, every guild that wanted to stay in competition, no matter if they wanted to or not, had to run the extra content because everybody else was going to do it too.

On top of that, it was frustrating for 10 man guilds because 25 man guilds swooped in and stole all the 10 man firsts and screwed up the rankings, because it's much easier to do 10 man content with a 25 man raiding guild since you can easily stack ideal classes for every fight, and you're likely to be more geared. By splitting them up, it gave 10 man guilds a possibility of an identity, and another "bracket" of competition.

People often forget, but shared lockouts were implemented in response to overwhelming player feedback in favor of it. And it remains overwhelmingly in favor of it today, contrary to what a few very loud dissenting opinions may have people believe.

You weren't around during WotLK raiding were you?
Back then 10 man, 25 man (and their respective heroic counterparts during Toc) had separate lockouts. Result? Progression guilds forcing members to run the same instance several times (up to 4 times on 1 char, most had many alts as well) in order to stay on top of progression as compared to other guilds.
When it comes to true progression guilds, they will do ANYTHING to get ahead, and thus all the competing guilds need to do the same to stay on par.
This isn't a decision they enjoy, but they feel it is necessary. The guild members of course are then really being forced into it.

The current raiding system is something that has been refined over years of trial and error and I don't think they've had something as fair as they have now (not counting the whole thunderforged drop BS, just purely lockouts and what versions of the raids are available). I wonder how flex will interact with this, but if done properly it will only improve the experience.

My point, NO they were not forced to do anything, they don't have to run anything, but the lockout prevents the people who do want to.

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Here is another example of the same mentality..

restricting dailies is a terrible idea. Make the REP they give accountwide, not the quests.

What about the concern that if player X does 100 dailies a day, I have to as well to keep up? (Source)

No you don't HAVE to in order to keep up, but you can if you WANT to, but by restricting them the only people forced to do anything are the ones who can't do it anymore because people are afraid they have to do something to keep up and that's just bull you don't have to do anything.

My point, NO they were not forced to do anything, they don't have to run anything, but the lockout prevents the people who do want to.

No you don't HAVE to in order to keep up, but you can if you WANT to, but by restricting them the only people forced to do anything are the ones who can't do it anymore because people are afraid they have to do something to keep up and that's just bull you don't have to do anything.

You don't have to use food, flasks or potions while raiding either but show me a serious guild that doesn't consider it mandatory.
If you're a serious raider, you HAVE to do it. It would be the same if lockouts weren't shared.